“What good are gold and silver coins to you?”
“My children, Orion. If they’re still alive they were sent to the slave market in Arbela or Trapezus or one of the port cities along the coast. I’m going to find them and buy their freedom.”
I wondered if he would live long enough to find two stolen children in all the vastness of this huge empire.
We were close enough to Lake Van to see its waters glittering in the setting sun, far off on the horizon, like a sliver of gleaming silver. But Harkan’s attention was on the caravan wending along the road below the ridge on which we had camped.
It was a big caravan. I counted thirty-seven donkeys laden with cargo, sixteen wagons lumbering along behind teams of oxen. And fully two dozen guards, armed with spears and swords, shields slung on their backs, bronze helmets glinting in the sun.
“Rich as Croesus,” Harkan muttered as we watched from behind a screen of young trees and shrubbery.
“And heavily guarded,” I said.
He nodded grimly. “Tonight. While they’re asleep.”
I agreed that would be the best tactic. But then I looked into his hard dark eyes and said, “This is my last raid with you, Harkan. Tomorrow I set out for Ararat.”
His gaze did not waver an inch. “If we’re both alive tomorrow, pilgrim.”
The men of the caravan were no fools. They arranged their wagons into a rough square for the night and posted guards atop them. The others slept inside the square, where they kept four big fires blazing. The horses and donkeys were herded into a makeshift corral by the stream that meandered along the side of the road.
Harkan had military experience, that I could see from the attack he planned and the crisp, sure orders he gave. There were fifteen of us, nearly fifty of them, all told. We had to use stealth and surprise to offset their numbers.
Only the two Cappadocians among Harkan’s men were bowmen, so his plan was to kill the two guards nearest our position with arrows fired from the dark beyond the light of their fires.
“As the arrows are fired, the rest of us charge,” he commanded.
I nodded in the darkness. As I made my way through the trees to the place where we had tied our horses, I thought once again that I would be killing men I had no grievance against, strangers who would die for no reason better than the fact that they had possessions that we wanted to steal.
I thought of Ketu and the lessons he had tried to teach me of the Eightfold Path. Desire nothing. I almost laughed aloud. But then I remembered his telling me about the older gods, the deities that the Hindis had worshipped long before Buddha. If all men are reborn after death, what does it matter if they are slain?
What was it he had told me that Krishna says in one of their poems? “Thy tears are for those beyond tears… The wise grieve not for those who live; and they grieve not for those who die—for life and death shall pass away.”
All right, I told myself as I led my horse along the dark trail along the top of the ridge. I’m going to help some of those men find new lives for themselves.
Like a good general, Harkan had scouted the area thoroughly during the daylight hours. We moved as quietly as wraiths along the top of the ridge, and then led our horses carefully down the trail he had found to the road below. It was a cloudy night, damp and raw and threatening rain. We could see the bright blaze of the caravan’s campfires up ahead. We stopped short of the dancing light the fires threw and mounted our horses. A cold drizzle began to sift down from the low clouds.
The two Cappadocians were still afoot. They crept a little closer, then a little closer still. I could see the guards atop the wagons, backlit by the campfires, perfect targets. One of them was standing; the other hunched down with his cloak wrapped around him. The Cappadocians knelt and fitted arrows to their bows. They pulled their bowstrings back to their chests and let loose.
At that instant we charged, leaving the two bowmen to mount their horses and follow us in.
I saw both the guards topple over as we yelled our wildest and drove our horses through the gaps between the wagons. Men were scrambling in the light of the fires, reaching for arms, rubbing sleep from their startled eyes. As my body accelerated into overdrive, the world slowed around me into a languid, torpid dream.
I speared a man who was clutching a blanket around him as he tried to shake his sword loose from its scabbard with one hand. His mouth went round and his eyes bulged as my spear penetrated his chest. I wrenched the spear free and he tumbled to the ground in slow motion, as if he no longer had any bones in his limbs.
A spear came hurtling out of the darkness. I ducked under it and rode down the man who had thrown it at me. Wise in the ways of battle, he threw himself on the ground, flat on his face, to give me almost no target for my charging lunge. But in my overdrive state I had plenty of time to see what he was doing. As he slowly, slowly dropped to his hands and knees and then flattened himself onto his belly I adjusted the aim of my spear point and skewered him. His head jerked up and he screamed, his face distorted in agony. My spear dug into the ground and snapped as I rode past him.
Out of the corner of my eye I saw Harkan’s horse go down, with him pinned beneath it. A half-dozen armed men were rushing to finish him off. I charged into their midst as I pulled my sword, slashing on both sides of me, taking arms from shoulders, splitting skulls into bloody pulps.
I dismounted and hauled Harkan’s dying horse off his leg. He limped aside, tried to stand up and failed. I lifted him bodily with one hand and swung him up onto my horse. He still had his sword in his right hand. A lean swarthy warrior came at me with a spear, holding an oblong shield in front of him. I grabbed the spear with my left hand and wrenched it away from him, split his shield with one overhand blow of my sword and then disemboweled him.
Four of our men were down, but most of the caravan’s guards were already dead or wounded. The merchants and their servants were fighting too, but not very effectively. I killed two more guards and was advancing on an overweight, paunchy merchant in a splotched robe when he threw down his sword and fell to his knees.
“We surrender!” he screeched. “We surrender! Spare us!”
Everyone froze for an instant. Harkan, up on my horse, pointed his sword at the guard who faced him on foot. The man took a step back, looked around and saw that no one was fighting any more, and threw his sword on the ground in disgust. He was a tall, rangy man with black skin, half naked, obviously roused from his sleep. But there was blood on his sword and fire in his eye.
“Spare us, spare us,” the fat merchant was blubbering. “Take what you want, take everything, but spare our lives.”
Harkan did that. He sent the merchant and the few servants he had left alive off on some of the donkeys, into the drizzling night, leaving all their goods behind. And their slain.
Six of the guards still lived, after Harkan’s men had given their wounded mercy killings. They too were professional soldiers turned mercenaries in the turmoil of the Great King’s accession to the throne.
“You can go with your former employer or you can join us,” Harkan offered them.
The tall black man said, “What do we gain by joining you?” His voice was a deep rich baritone.
Harkan grinned viciously in the firelight. “An equal share of all we take. A price on your head. And the joy of following my orders at all times.”
“I don’t speak for the others,” said the black man, “but I would rather take what fat merchants own than guard it for them.”
“Good! What’s your name? Where are you from?”
“Batu. From far away, the land beyond Egypt where the forest goes on forever.”
The five other erstwhile guards also agreed to join Harkan’s band, but grudgingly, I thought, without the unfettered enthusiasm of Batu.
By morning it was raining hard and Harkan’s leg was blue and swollen from hip to mid-calf. He sat beneath the canvas shelter we had fashioned amid the trees back up on the ridge with his bruised leg stretched out straight and raised up off the damp ground by resting his heel on an overturned helmet.